moonslav59

We were cheap before 2024 and then spent less than we lost. There is no other way to spin this. cots opening day budget: $207M 2022, $181M 2023, and $171M 2024. end of season: $217M, $203M, $188M

I agree, the whole "full throttle" thing just made it worse, but even if it wasn't said, the spending fell way short of what we needed. During the 2023 season, we had already dumped Kike's deal (a FA anyway) and Brasier, and then lost FAs: $15M J Turner $10M Kluber $7M Duvall $32M in lost FA contracts. We traded significant contracts with Sale ($22M, but paid $10M) and Dugo ($8.7M arb) We added: $39M/2 Giolito (the only real signing.) $10M/2 Hendriks (more for 2025) Less than $25M AAV in FA signings and nothing longterm. $5.9M by trade w O'Neill (cost less than Dugo would have cost)

Talk about feast or famine.

The only out of the inning was maybe the hardest hit ball of the night.

The Betts trade was worse. That's not even 1 decade ago. That one was bad in foresight and hindsight, too.

They don't make the trade for Grissom, if they had to pay for all of Sale, too. It was about getting Grissom and saving some money to be able to up their $10M/1 budget on a SP'er to $19M for Gio. It was both.

We know what we have with Gio? I can't think of many more questionable starters than he is. I am not for running back the same rotation, next year, and I really like Sandoval. Crochet is an ace. Sandoval might be a good #3, but counting on him as a #4 is better. Bello is a #4-5. Dobbins is largely unknow: maybe a 4-5 is too high to bet him to be. Gio is a #4-5, in my book. We need a #2, and maybe even a #2 and #3.

We held the Sale card in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. You are right, we should have known to walk away before we extended him. Good point, Max.

About 15-25 FA pitchers and dozens of trade candidates. Gio may trigger his option, if he gets to 140 IP. he's at 59 IP, now with maybe 14 starts to go.

Just know that championship teams are not built overnight. It takes planning beyond today, only. It takes a healthy mix of planning for the future and today to win today.

Was it any better looking at a pitcher's final 2-3 weeks of a season and signing him to $21M/1? (Buehler) Avoiding long term big SP'er signings nets guys like we get, over and over. Sure, some teams strike gold on these types of signings, but the odds are not great. BTW, the odds are not great on large and long FA SP'er signing, too.

We do have more holes than I expected we might have, although Narvaez may have filled the catcher hole. Do you agree with these holes as being the essential ones that need filling to be a serious contender in 2026? SP 1 Crochet SP2 ______ SP3 Sandoval SP4 Bello SP5 Dobbins SP6 Crawford, Harrison, Fitts, Houck, Peralez, Early Closer ______ RP2 Slaten RP3 Whitlock RP4 Crawford RP5 Harrison RP6 Houck RP7 Hicks RP8 Murphy, Weissert, Fitts, Criswell, Wink, Bernardino, Kelly C Narvaez, _____ (Wong) 1B ______ (Casas, Campbell, Toro, Romy) 2B Mayer or Story (Campbell, DHam, Romy, Grissom) SS ______ Story or Mayer (Romy, Romero) 3B Bregman or ________ (Mayer, Toro, Eaton, Romy) LF Duran, Anthony (Yoshida, Jh Garcia) CF Rafaela (Jh Garcia) RF Abreu, Refsnyder(?) Jh Garcia DH Yoshida-Romy/Refsnyder or _______ I see 4 major holes- 5 if Bregman bolts, plus 2-3 minor ones (#2 catcher, DH and maybe another pitcher.) With the logjam of OF'ers and valuable prospects we can afford to trade, I'm thinking we can fill 1-2 slots via trade, and if the budget just stays the same 2-4 slots via free agency. Tell me, what other slots needs a ________.

I'm very optimistic about our young core and prospects. I'm probably one of the few Sox fans that is even optimistic about our farm pitching and feel that our current young pitching looks better than it has in a long time. Some of the most recent Sox pitching staffs that looked better on paper were much older with some closer to being toast than we expected- like Porcello, ERod, Price and Sale. 26 Crochet & Bello 24-25 Dobbins, Harrison & Fitts 27 Slaten, Murphy & Wink 28-29 Houck, Crawford, Whitlock, Sandoval & Criswell Okay, 3-4 of these guys are not highly promising, but I see 6-7 with proven skills and/or high upside and another 2-3 with significant promise. We may just be a solid #2 SP'er and top closer away from a very nice pitching staff in 2026. At to this a very long list of some promising to very promising pitching prospects: Very promising, IMO: Perales, Tolle, Clarke, Early & Valera Promising: Rivera, Sandlin, Cason, Paez, Monegro, Mullins, Aita, Delzine and maybe Uberstine, Moran, I Campbell, Fajardo, Futrell, D Reyes, Holobetz, J Bello and others.

I thought Ben deserved at least one more year with a push from above to make at least one big prospect deal. The only way I see keeping DD longer was to keep spending. I thought it made sense to let him go, if the idea was to gut the team and budget. While Bloom was handed a near impossible situation, he failed to do what he was hired to do; Namely find diamonds in the rough and keep us nearer to contention than he ended up doing. I like that Brez had made serious moves to change the farm culture towards pitching as a higher priority, but that takes time- maybe longer than JH has patience for, and for all we know, maybe the changes will not help. I admire the effort, anyway. Bloom kept the priorities on everyday players and tried to trade and sign for pitching. He failed on that. I happen to think Brex built a nice core to work with as a foundation. I thought he did enough over the winter to make us a playoff contender, and I guess 3 GB is not really "out of it," but it seems we have fallen much short to expectations than many felt we would, so far. With the Devers trade and all the long term injuries, I'm not sure why there should still be much optimism. I'm not for trading top prospects for bigtime rentals, and I doubt we find another Beeks for Nate or Aldo Ramirez for Schwarber deal out there. I guess those two cases do offer some hope, but we need to make a serious mover in the next 5 weeks for me to want us to be serious buyers. (But, again, not too serious.)

With Devers dumped and Bregman on the IL, I fully agree.

Wrong, again. Does "How Soon Is Now?" ring a bell?

I fully understand the reasons to avoid long term deals. Just look at history, but look at the history of our $10M/1 and $20 to $40M/2 deals. It's very hard to win without a few really top players, and who do we have for 2026, other than Crochet? We may lose the only other one, in Bregman, if we don't offer an longer deal. We do have a few better than average players in several slots and some with high upside, but I can't see us building a championship team by signing only short or shorter term mid-level deals.

I'm not making an excuse. I'm merely pointing out that if you trade tomorrow's stars for the here and now, it will effect tomorrow. You can keep saying we can just spend more and more and more, but even that has limits. How many rings do the high spending Mets have?

Journeymen: Gio, Wilson, Romy (all doing okay) Toro, Eaton, Wong, DHam and Weissert. Useful vets: Bregman, Chapman,Abreu, Refsnyder Not useful: Buehler, Hicks, Hendriks with Duran & Houck (not for right now, anyway) Players approaching pre-prime or peak prime: Crochet, Bello, Dobbins, Sandoval, Crawford, Slaten Whitlock, Harrison, Narvaez, Mayer, Anthony, Rafaela, and prospects not yet in MLB. I'm not sure where the "most" comes from. Feel free to move anyone to the Journeymen category and name the "Highly suspect" suspects, specifically. If you count Gio, Wilson, Romy, Duran and Houck in either of your categories, I come to maybe 13 out of 26. (See the Journeymen + Not useful lists)

I know I'm a homer. I know I've been more of an optimist than many on this site, but I'm souring on this year's hopes due to the Devers trade and being sick and tired of pinning hopes on players returning from the IL and producing like they were beforehand. That's been as bad as the "wait till next year" mantra. "Wait till ____, ____ & _____ return!" Trying to be objective, let's look at our near half way point fWAR positional rankings: 9th Catcher (Better than I expected and a nice outlook going beyond 2025) 25th 1B (Way worse than I expected and little hope Casas will rebound, next season.) 28th 2B (This position has been absurdly horrible for way too long. Only Mayer at 2B would give me hope, but we need him at SS and maybe 3B, too. KC might rebound.) 23rd SS (About what I expected, but that was assuming Story would not be healthy. No hope here, except Mayer.) 3rd 3B (Was #1 before Bregman got hurt. No hope, here, if Bregman bolts. See Mayer comment) 15th LF (Falling like a lead balloon and worse than I expected for a Duran regression. Anthony & Jh Garcia offer hope.) 6th CF (Better than I expected from Rafaela. Nice outlook, here.) 6th RF (I actually expected this from the Abreu-Refsnyder platoon. Nice future, here.) 4th DH (But this is a mirage with Devers gone.) 4th Pen (Way, way, way better than I expected. Future unknown.) 15th SP (About as expected. The depth helped, a lot, but the failures of Houck and Buehler to nail down the 2-3 slots killed us. Bello and Dobbins help make the future look brighter, but they do not offset the darkness from Houck, Crawford, Criswell and Fitts from preseason expectations.) All in all, C, CF, RF, the pen and 3B look like pluses for 2025. That's it. That is not hopeful.

It would take trading away much of "next year's" talent, and then when we fall short, like we likely will, anyway, we can't even say "Wait till next year." We'll be saying, "Wait till 2033."

Agreed. Everytime we spend $10M/1, I say "You get what you pay for." Every winter I beg for a top pitcher signing or trade- or both. I loved the Crochet trade and wanted Fried, too. Fried got $27M x 8. While 8 years is absurd, it's what is needed to get guys like him. The $27M AAV was $6M more than Buehler! We spent almost $90M on Buehler, Gio, Sandoval & Hendriks. Add the money we spent on Richards, Kluber, Paxton and others you can see where I'm going with this. It doesn't equal what Fried cost, but in terms of AAV, it's $27M vs anywhere from about $10M to more than $27M, each season. I totally agree with you on this, Bell. To me, it has been our biggest singular failure since the Nate re-signing, and even that one was not super great. (extending him after '22 would have been.) We need to take the plunge. I'm not sure this winter offers the type of guy to do it with. I really liked Fried, last winter, but we need to roll the dice. How Soon Is Now?

To think we can do enough at the deadline to become a serious contender might be the biggest mistake possible. Now, if we pull things together in the next 5 weeks, and returning players from the IL are looking back to form, and we seem to be just 2- maybe 3- key pieces from being a top 3 AL team, then okay, but as of now, that seems pretty remote. We should know more in a few weeks. I'm not giving in, yet, but if the trade deadline was tomorrow, I'm all in on selling every FA, except if Bregman can be extended. Then, I trade Duran and or Abreu. If we trade both for nice returns, we can go with ... LF Anthony CF Rafaela RF Jh Garcia DH Yoshida- Romy

Money was certainly a part of the Sale trade, as it was with Betts. Not replacing the money for Kimbrel & Kelly, Porcello & ERod, JD & Bogey and on and on. Not many GMs could take a roster gutting like that and produce winning teams. They certainly could have done better. Even $10M/1 deals should eventually net a good result.

He may decide to go for years in his next deal, thinking he put to rest all the "He's in decline" talk. Maybe not.